If the recent Fantastic Mr Fox movie is anything to go by, the chicken & the fox battle can only go one way… or can it? The Metro this morning reported on a certain Chickan called ‘Dude’ who isn’t so “chicken” after all. A less than fantastic Mr Fox was found dead, apparently from several head wounds. The suspects: Dude, Izzy, Pongo and Pecky, four birds who played chicken with the fox and, it would appear, won.

The fantastic fighting cock, aka Dude, led his ladies into battle when the fox managed to get into their coop late at night. Surprisingly, the feather-weight contest didn’t end in a slaughter of the chickens but the demise of the predator.

News of the fight broke when chicken owner Michelle Cordell, 43, went to collect eggs from her brood and found the dead fox lying in their midst.

‘I was so shocked. When I went to the chicken coup they were all fine but, when I went to the other side, the fox was lying there dead,’ she said.

Ms Cordell added that a little table in the corner of the coup, which the chickens perched on, had been knocked over and was lying next to the fox’s head.

‘It seems they kicked over the table and knocked the fox out, and then pecked it to death,’ she said.

‘It had little blood marks on its legs that looked like they had been pecked. It had not been dead long. The fox was not a cub but it was only a young one and Dude and Izzy are big birds.’

A fox killed one hen and another cockerel just before Christmas but Ms Cordell is certain the chickens saw off the latest attack.

She said: ‘I reared Dude from a little chick and he has become very protective over the others.’ Her verdict on the cockerel? ‘Now he is a murderer.’